Cedric Stephens | Improving the design of disaster response a national imperative

What do Munro College, Manning’s School and Westwood High School have in common, other than the fact that each institution is, on average, nearly 200 years old? One answer is that they suffered extensive damage caused by Hurricane Beryl. Another is with their combined age of 596 years, these schools experienced many hurricanes, tropical storms, and earthquakes during the past century.

Their current leaders displayed positive attitudes and confidence when discussing the latest recovery efforts. Reopening did not appear conditioned on claim payments from insurance companies.

The damage to these school buildings would have been greater if Beryl had passed directly over the island instead of tracking offshore along the southern coastline. Given the long histories of these institutions, I expected that their buildings would have been designed and built to withstand direct hits from category-4 hurricane force winds. Why this didn’t happen is another matter.

Professor Michael Taylor, physicist, climate scientist, and dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, was reported by this newspaper as saying that Beryl was the first hurricane in recorded history to have reached category-5 strength in the Atlantic Ocean.

“We are living climate-change now. We are dealing with one manifestation of climate-change here, which is the intense storm. But when this storm has passed, we are going to deal with another manifestation which is intense heat, and we are getting less resources to deal with it. Both you and I had to find resources to prepare for Beryl. And we will have to find (those) resources again,” he said.

Meteorologists say Hurricane Beryl intensified from a category-1 to a category-4 storm in under 10 hours. It was the fastest intensification ever recorded prior to September. The storm was also the first category-4 to ever form in the Atlantic in the month of June and was the earliest hurricane to develop into a category-5.

The Gleaner’s July 8 issue highlighted a dire warning from Professor Taylor – ‘More Wrath to Come’. It was made to climate-change deniers. When he began preaching about climate-change years ago and that more intense storms were likely in the Caribbean, “many locals scoffed at him”.

There were examples in 2017, when Hurricane Irma hit the Leeward Islands and was followed by Hurricane Maria two weeks later. In 2018, there were 15 tropical storms, eight hurricanes and two major hurricanes of category-3 or higher. Beryl, according to Professor Taylor, was confirmation of his ‘long-trumpeted’ message.

His claim can be contrasted with comments made by some members of Jamaica’s parliament and a Ministry of Finance and Public Service technocrat at a meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee on May 17, 2017. The lawmakers were “questioning the purpose of Jamaica continuing to pay millions in insurance premiums under a regional fund when Jamaica does not qualify for payouts despite damage due to heavy rainfall and hurricane”. MPs Mikael Phillips and Fitz Jackson, according to this newspaper, “argued that Jamaica should revisit whether taxpayers money should continue going to the insurance fund when payouts are difficult to get”.

Amazingly, none of the persons present, including the technocrat – a former financial secretary, who sat at the top of the civil service establishment – mentioned climate- change, and that it posed existential risks to small island developing states like ours, and would cause more intense and frequent tropical storms and hurricanes.

Further, they appeared clueless about the region’s and Jamaica’s risk profiles, or how the catastrophe risk insurance facility, a local invention, was designed and functioned and that it was appropriate for these times.

Overseas experts, catastrophe modellers, who use complex technologies to calculate losses from events like Beryl have estimated Jamaica’s economic losses at US$300 to US$700 million (J$4.65 billion to J$10.85 billion). Provisional figures from government sources, according to information in the public domain, put the losses at nearly $12 billion being: schools – $800 million; agriculture - $1 billion and roads – $10 billion.

Beryl, according to the July 8 issue of this newspaper, will trigger a payment of J$2.5 billion from CCRIF under the country’s Tropical Cyclone Policy. Government has received a Preliminary Modelled Loss and Policy Payment Report from the facility. This policy, according to a Jamaica Information Service article, “represents the fourth level in the government’s multi-layered disaster risk financing framework. The administration has strategically put in place a multi-layered set of financial instruments to pre-finance the emergency response to and recovery costs of natural disasters.”

Minister of Finance and Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke, according to JIS, “has indicated that while it is neither expected nor designed that all storms will trigger all instruments, the idea is that Jamaica should always be able to access resources from some instruments for every severe weather event. On July 5, he advised that the government initiated the process to access funds under a Contingent Credit Claim with the Inter-American Development Bank.

“The administration also has a $140-billion Precautionary and Liquidity Line, PLL, with the International Monetary Fund. The PLL is intended for countries with strong fundamentals and can be drawn down in the event of liquidity challenges emerging from natural disasters or economic shocks.” The minister pointed out, however, that this facility is unlikely to be drawn down at the current time.

In the meantime, local and overseas sources indicate that Hurricane Beryl did not meet the parameters agreed between the bondholders and the finance ministry for the country’s four season US$150 million catastrophe bond that was the subject of my April 14, 2024, article ‘Jamaica Seeking Cat Bond for Hellish Season’.

The Government of Jamaica has developed and implemented a new and robust financial structure to protect the country against climate-change. Others in the society, including insurance companies, must follow that example. It cannot be business as usual.

To paraphrase Professor Taylor, Beryl confirms the fact that climate-change is real. More and similar events should be expected during the current hurricane season and in future years. Understanding the nature of the hazards that we and our neighbours in the Caribbean face is the first step in the design and development of effective responses.

- Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com